In about a three-hour span today, Manchester United clinched its record 19th English top-flight league championship … and Manchester City secured its first significant trophy in 35 years by winning the FA Cup final.

And how does any of this make it a big day in Abu Dhabi?

Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi and president of the UAE, owns Man City and, therefore, it is the default “home” team in the UAE among Premier League sides.

Not that this pair of successes pleases both sides of Manchester (a dreary city in the middle of the country), the United red and the City blue. They are bitter rivals and, until City’s Yaya Toure scored the only goal in the FA Cup final, ManU fans seemed to derive almost as much pleasure from City’s 35-year trophy drought as they did their own success.

Though winning a 19th league title, one more than Liverpool has, probably enabled ManU fans to deal with City’s annoying championship, later in the day.

City is one of those rarities in sports — a franchise flush with cash that actually shows results. Since Sheikh Mansour bought City from another expat, the former Thailand leader Thaksin Shinawatra, he has poured money into the team, buying almost every useful player available.

In this story in The National we note that now that City is up and running (and also headed for the Champions League next season) … the plan is to sell off several good players who can’t get into the first team. Emmanuel Adebayor, Craig bellamy, Felipe Caicedo, Roque Santa Cruz, Wayne Bridge, Nedum Onuoha, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Michael Johnson …

The idea is that the proceeds from selling those guys will pay for, say, Alexis Sanchez or, Roberto Mancini’s fantasy acquisition, Cesc Fabregas — without making the team go deeper into debt.

One interesting stat in that story: City paid players 106 percent of total team income last season. Yeah.

Another interesting stat: City spent more than $400 million (250 million pounds) just on transfer fees over the past two seasons.

And in this story, one of our England-based correspondents notes that Mancini had promised a trophy and a place in the Champions League during City’s tour of North America last summer — and noted that he delivered on both.

And in this meaty story, another of our correspondents does a scene piece from the FA Cup final in Wembley. If, say, you’re Marc Stein (the only person in the U.S. who I know is a City fan) and can’t get enough City coverage in your diet, feel free …

Meanwhile, back to United which (shhhh!) remains more popular in the newsroom …

Yet another of our England-based correspondents did a think piece on United’s two-decade surge and credited Alex Ferguson with making it all possible.

In that story, he notes that Liverpool had 16 championships to United’s seven when Ferguson took over at ManU, and that it got up to 18-7 before Ferguson led the club to 12 championships with no reply from Liverpool. Imagine the Lakers winning 11 consecutive NBA championships while the Celtics won zero. Pretty much the same thing.

(And, actually, the Lakers have a 7-1 lead on the Celtics in titles since 1987. I like that stat. Like it a lot. Boston led 13-5 through 1979, too, and it’s now only 17-16 Celts.)

So, anyway, reflecting City’s local ownership The National might be one of the handful of newspapers in the world that kicked out the jambs in its City coverage (pages 1-6) and relegated United to two pages (8-9).

We also had a sky reefer on A1 announcing City’s victory and not mentioning United’s.

Actually, it was too bad that the league was decided on the same day as the FA Cup … which lots of soccer fans in Britain had been complaining about from the moment that United defeated Chelsea last weekend to all-but-clinch ahead of today’s match at Blackpool.

Perhaps the cheekiest bit of United news we ran was a quotation from Ferguson about how the current club had missed its chance to win three trophies when it fell out of the FA Cup (to City) in the semis. He said that the 1999 team, which won three championships, has to be ranked on a higher plane than this team — which could still win the Champions League.

Said Ferguson: “I thought we would get knocked out somewhere along the line. Fortunately, it was the one you would want to win least of all because the Premier League and the Champions League are paramouont.”

(Italic emphasis added.)

So, he’s saying the FA Cup, the trophy City won, is the one ManU was least interested in winning. Take that, blue people/noisy neighbors.

Officially, however, we in the UAE think it’s a very big deal. Team Abu Dhabi, which happens to be based in Manchester, holders of the oldest trophy in soccer!